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In a groundbreaking study, Charles C. Mann challenges traditional assumptions about the Americas prior to the arrival of the Europeans in 1492, revealing how a new generation of researchers equipped with novel scientific techniques have come to surprising conclusions. Mann sheds clarifying light on the methods used to arrive at these new visions of the pre-Columbian Americas and how they have affected our understanding of our history and our thinking about the environment. Presented on 9 CDs, running time approximately 11 1/4 hours.

Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus's landing had crossed the Bering Strait twelve thousand years ago; existed in mainly small, nomadic bands; and lived so lightly on the land that the Americas was still a vast wilderness. But as Charles C. Mann now makes clear, archaeologist and anthropologists have spent the last thirty years proving these and manyother long-held assumptions wrong. In a book that startles and persuades, Mann reveals how a new generation of researchers equipped with novel scientific techniques came to previously unheard of conclusions.

A groundbreaking book that alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans in 1492. This widely acclaimed bestseller explores leading archeologists' & anthropologists' most recent discoveries about the Western Hemisphere before Columbus. Charles C. Mann challenges ingrained images of a vast wilderness, showing that the indigenous cultures were far larger, more organized, and more technologically advanced than we have previously understood. Illus., 56 photos; 15 maps. 528p.

"From the author of 1491--the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas--a deeply engaging new history that explores the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs. More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed totally different suites of plants and animals. Columbus's voyages brought them back together--and marked the beginning of an extraordinary exchange of flora and fauna between Eurasia and the Americas. As Charles Mann shows, this global ecological tumult--the "Columbian Exchange"--underlies much of subsequent human history. Presenting the latest generation of research by scientists, Mann shows how the creation of this worldwide network of exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and for two centuries made Manila and Mexico City-- where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamically interacted--the center of the world. In 1493, Charles Mann gives us an eye-opening scientific interpretation of our past, unequaled in its authority and fascination"--

"From the author of 1491--the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas--a deeply engaging new history that explores the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs. More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed totally different suites of plants and animals. Columbus's voyages brought them back together--and marked the beginning of an extraordinary exchange of flora and fauna between Eurasia and the Americas. As Charles Mann shows, this global ecological tumult--the "Columbian Exchange"--underlies much of subsequent human history. Presenting the latest generation of research by scientists, Mann shows how the creation of this worldwide network of exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and for two centuries made Manila and Mexico City-- where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamically interacted--the center of the world. In 1493, Charles Mann gives us an eye-opening scientific interpretation of our past, unequaled in its authority and fascination"--

A study of multicultural diversity takes a photographic study of "average" family life in thirty dissimilar cultures--from Samoa to Kuwait to Sarajevo--and examines the potential impact of the new global economy on the distinct cultural heritage of the human community.

The book illuminates the essential questions that now confront environmentalists, developers, ecologists, and indeed, all Americans. The authors suggest new principles for striking a desperately important balance between human beings and the rest of the world. Notes, index. 302p.